We Join Less, Get On Technology More

The future holds very little socializing, I think. At least in person. I believe we will be a nation, if not most of the industrialized world, of people looking down, into our phones, mostly, and laptops, secondarily.

First, what we're doing.

Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital

Fewer American Workers Join Labor Unions

The military's real problem: Fewer Americans are joining

Younger Generations Less Likely to Join Boy Scouts

Masons, other service groups fight membership declines

Moose, Elk Joining The Endangered

NASCAR Is In Trouble And Nobody Wants To Talk About It

There are a lot of reasons for the NFL's ratings slide

So long, televised football: Millennials are so over you

Americans becoming less religious, especially young 

U.S. Public Becoming Less Religious | Pew Research Center

And now, for the problems...

People Spend Too Much Time on Smartphones

U.S. Young Adults Admit Too Much Time on Cell Phones

Britons spend more time on tech than asleep, study suggests

Putnam, "The Strange Disappearance of Civic America."

Amount of Time Spent Playing Video Games Influences Kids' Behavior

When Tech Is a Problem Child

How parents fight back against their kids’ obsession with smartphones and social media.

Doesn't seem like it portends good things for us, as a people, as a society, as a nation. A not very united states.

Where Is All This Technology Taking Us?

Occasionally, once in a great while, I get out of "my bubble", or am forced to, and look around at the technology and apps that are available, some for home computing but most, more and more, for our cell phones.

I tell you, it's overwhelming.

It's been fun for a while. If you realize you don't just have a TV in your pocket but a full-blown computer that can do who-knows-what-all, it's been fun. It is fun. It can be fun, anyway.

But every once in a while, I realize, how much there is out there, how much computer power is in our pockets and how dizzying it all is. It seems there are apps for so much more of the minutiae of our lives than I would think anyone could or would ever imagine.

I understand why these apps have been created, too, sure. Everyone has to "make their mark" and no less so than in computing but wow. Clearly we humans are taking all these apps and our phones way too far. In my eyes, anyway.

I think it's scary and getting scarier.

Americans Spend An Alarming 4.7 Hours 

On Their Phones

And the trend of time spent on cell phones is still increasing and the younger we are, the more it's increasing.

Yeah.  This is not your grandfather's world, that's for sure. Between these developments and humankind's rush into AI, artificial intelligence, I don't like the looks of where we're heading, as a species, as a people. I think we are, it seems, all running headlong, forward and we don't have any idea where we're going, where this is all leading us.

Y'all be nice out there.

Links:

Stephen Hawking warns of an 'intelligence explosion'

Stephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence could end mankind

Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates Warn

6 Best Google Apps for Chromebook

Google Apps for Education

Google Apps for Work – Email, Collaboration Tools And More

Google Apps | Google Developers

Google Apps Marketplace

The 100 Best iPhone Apps for 2016 | Digital Trends

On This Labor Day...

On this Labor Day, let’s ensure large corporations pay the taxes they owe us. When they do, we’ll be able to grow our economy and invest in workers and our communities.

Americans for Tax Fairness

When the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share, we’ll create millions of good paying jobs by rebuilding our crumbling roads, bridges and water systems, investing in a clean energy future, supporting our children and their education, and researching new medical cures.

Together we are fighting for a tax system that works for all Americans, not just the wealthy few.

Thank you and happy Labor Day weekend.

Frank Clemente
Executive Director

Links:

27 giant profitable companies paid no taxes

15 Fortune 500 Companies Paid No Federal Income 

Taxes in 2014

20% of big companies pay zero corporate taxes - Apr. 13, 2016

1 in 5 big U.S. companies pay no federal income tax

More Than 90% Of US Businesses Don't Pay The 

Corporate Income Tax

Apple Avoiding Taxes In Ireland

Google Joins Apple Avoiding Taxes With Stateless Income

How Google-Apple-Facebook Avoid Paying Taxes

Google Moved Billions Of Dollars To Bermuda To Avoid Taxes... Again

Entertainment Overnight -- And now for something completely different

The NSA?

If you think the NSA tracking us is a big deal, think about it.

We are so easily and simply traceable, it's not funny.

Between our cell phones, our computers and credit and/or debit cards, if virtually anyone wants to know anything about you, there's no difficulty to it at all.

At all.


Now, get out there and have a great weekend anyway.

And don't be paranoid.

Apple? That's it? That's all ya' got?

As we all know, the new Apple company--you know, the one without Steve Jobs--had yet another product release this last week.

Yes, they did.

And whoop-ti-freaking-do.

Apple unveils two new iPhones -- the 5S and 5C 

One's a cheaper model and the other offers colors.

Zounds.

Forgive me if I'm neither impressed nor dissuaded from thinking that unless things change at that company, they're going down.

Not even a bigger screen.

Seriously, Mr. Cook?

That's all y'all can come up with?

Quote of the day--on the internet, computers and us

In theory the Internet, along with its kindred advances, should expand our horizons, speeding us to aesthetic and intellectual territories we haven’t charted before. Often it does.

But at our instigation and with our assent, it also herds us into tribes of common thought and shared temperament, amplifying the timeless human tropism toward cliques. Cyberspace, like suburbia, has gated communities.

Our Web bookmarks and our chosen social-media feeds help us retreat deeper into our partisan camps. (Cable-television news lends its own mighty hand.) “It’s the great irony of the Internet era: people have more access than ever to an array of viewpoints, but also the technological ability to screen out anything that doesn’t reinforce their views,” Jonathan Martin wrote in Politico last year...

--Frank Bruni, New York Times columnist from his article in 

Sunday's paper, Traveling Without Seeing

Observations, August, 2013

Observation No. 1

People punish honesty.

Observation No. 2:

Our machines, our computers, our pocket phones, more than anything, are turning us into a nation of cowards.

We don't face situations we've created or people that we ought to otherwise face. Instead, we ignore them if they call or we text back, if/when forced into a "conversation."

Where we came from, where we're going

I remember when it used to be important, really, to sit down in the evening, at the end of each work day, and watch the evening, national news.

It wasn't that long ago.

But over time, the news has gotten far more "entertaining" and so, far less and less important.

Now, the evening news is very likely to have YouTube videos, showing about what some crazy cat--literally, a feline--did in their owner's back yard recently.

And then Fox "News" came along, shortly after the Republicans did away with the "Fairness Doctrine" so we could and would hear both sides of a story and one side wouldn't do all day, inflammatory commentary as the Fox stations do now.

And the local news?

Why, it got fluffier and fluffier until now, today, it's like cotton candy--mostly air.  Air and sugar.

And where are we going now? Is there any hope of it getting and better in the future?

I think we all know the answer to that one.

The biggest trend in outgoing news and incoming "staying informed" on our part--that of the citizen in the US and world--is that we've gone from desktop computers to laptops and there was a great deal of information out there and sure, there still is.

But now, now we're going on to our little cell phones, with all that same capability of the bigger computers but most people just use them to entertain themselves even further. The younger the person, the more attached they are to their mobile device--mostly phones--with videos and Tweets and that's about it.

I don't hold out hope for the coming generations.

I think they look to be very well-intended, well-meaning, empathetic, open-minded people with very little awareness of what's going on in their government and so, where their country and world is headed.

I hope they can and do prove me very, very wrong.

Indicators of where technology is going

And that change--big and fast change--is overtaking some big, powerful companies in the computer industry.

There were these four headlines Friday in The New York Times.

First, this one:

Dell Buys Time to Seek Support for Sale to Its Founder

It seems owner, founder Michael Dell of the formerly huge and important Dell Computer has been trying to buy back and take back over his computer making company, in an effort to save it. With our turn away from desktop computers, world wide, the company has been in serious trouble lately.

Next there's this:

Chip Maker, Posting a Loss, Seeks to Enter Game Market

Same thing here only the company is Advanced Micro Devices but the problems are the same--fewer desktops and laptops being sold.

Weak PC Market Catches Up to Microsoft

What were some of the biggest, most powerful and seemingly forever-formidable companies in the computer business--this time, Microsoft--are simply not immune to the turn to tablets, "devices" and cell phones. It's a huge turn.

Finally, there's this one:

Google Results Show Struggle With Mobile

In this case, it seems big and, again, powerful Google, who knows just how to use information and advertising from desktops and laptops just can't translate that same power into income for itself on the cursed little cell phones.

What's it all mean, besides the obvious, besides the fact that the entire computer industry is very much changing, and rather quickly, to those same, smaller cell phones and tablets?

It seems to mean that not only is there big change on the horizon but that that very same change seems to be coming at us at ever faster rates.  More and more big change at faster and faster rates.

It's tough to keep up with it all.

If you have or get a good idea, you'd better be on it fast, ladies and gentlemen.

Our future?

One of the best things about the next, upcoming generations is that they're so open-minded and inclusive and can't even imagine, for the most part, discriminating against a person for their race or sexual preference or whatever.

If there's a bad thing it's that, if we're ever invaded by a foreign nation, I expect and fear they'll be so distracted by the latest technology and also highly likely, chewing on Cheetohs and/or KFC and too preoccupied in too many ways to notice.

To borrow a quote from another local blogger:  "YOU KIDS GET OF MY LAWN!!"

I love the new ad slogan for Apple Computer

That's beautiful, isn't it?

Clearly a shameless ploy to get us thinking it's all done here in the States.

The second part of the ad should closely follow with:

"...still made by near-slave labor in China."

Thank you, Tim Cook.

On life, living and the internet today

The New York Times has three good to great to excellent articles today on the internet and what it's doing to us today.

I will start, too, with the best of the three because I am convinced it is one of the most beautiful, true, poignant, timely and even important columns  I've read in a long, long time and that we might read all year:

How Not to Be Alone

It is about, yes, computers and our phones and technology and how they do bring us together but also, paradoxically, how they can also separate us physically and even emotionally.

Because the whole thing is that good and, as I said, even important, I'll only put a few quotes of it here:

Technology celebrates connectedness, but encourages retreat...

The flow of water carves rock, a little bit at a time. And our personhood is carved, too, by the flow of our habits...     

Psychologists who study empathy and compassion are finding that unlike our almost instantaneous responses to physical pain, it takes time for the brain to comprehend the psychological and moral dimensions of a situation. The more distracted we become, and the more emphasis we place on speed at the expense of depth, the less likely and able we are to care...    

 

THE problem with accepting — with preferring — diminished substitutes is that over time, we, too, become diminished substitutes. People who become used to saying little become used to feeling little.
 

With each generation, it becomes harder to imagine a future that resembles the present.

 

I worry that the closer the world gets to our fingertips, the further it gets from our hearts.

 

Most of the time, most people are not crying in public, but everyone is always in need of something that another person can give, be it undivided attention, a kind word or deep empathy. There is no better use of a life than to be attentive to such needs.

 

I say again, it was one good to great article. I would implore nearly anyone and everyone to read it.

 

The second and third articles, totally unintended to be related, I think, show what people are doing in order to stay connected:

 

The 'I Dos,' Unplugged

Showing how brides and grooms are having people leave their phones at the door, during weddings, increasingly (and good for them).

 

Student Social Climbing, but on an Indoor Bike

Wherein, students are attending kind of "cycle parties" and not texting, etc.

Interesting stuff.

There's lots more in the Times today, of course, on technology (like on the US and Chinese, negotiating how we'll work together and what will and will not happen with cyberespionage) but these, above, I thought were good and important on how we all act, interpersonally, with the 'puters and what we do and don't do with them.

Enjoy your Sunday, y'all.

It's not just Apple--or GE--not paying taxes

This past week, Apple, Inc. took a beating in Washington and nationally for manipulating very legal tax laws to avoid paying any taxes.

We knew this of GE, General Electric, years ago and we've known other companies also do it but I think it's important to get out there more names of firms who do the same. Herewith, then, is a list of ten of the worst, biggest examples:

It gets worse, too, to an extent. There are companies who game our tax system so totally, WE'RE PAYING THEM TO BE IN BUSINESS, as a nation, you and me (click on picture for easier reading):

It's important to know.

I say again, companies should at least pay a minimum--say a 10% minimum, by law--for access to our markets and so we can keep up our infrastructure, whether they're from here in the US or elsewhere.

Link:  It's Not Just One Bad 'Apple'

Garmin on list of "Most Profitable Products"

24/7 Wall St. ranked the top America’s Most Profitable Products  in the nation and our own, local Garmin is in the right in the thick of it:

7. Garmin nüvi

• Operating margin: 15%
• Revenue: $1.2 billion
• Market share: Greater than 50%
• Industry: Consumer electronics

Garmin is a navigation device company, focusing on GPS technology. By far, the most profitable of the company’s five divisions on a dollar basis, despite the fact that other divisions of the company have better margins, is the automotive/mobile group. This division makes and sells Garmin’s GPS units. This segment accounted for 55% of the company’s sales in 2012 — $221 million in operating profit on $1.5 billion in revenue. By comparison, none of the other four segments accounted for more than 15% of sales. Much of the segment’s success was due to Garmin’s nüvi product line, which accounted for 43% of the company’s total revenue in 2012. Garmin is by far the largest participant in the GPS market, with over a 50% market share, according to Consumer Reports.

Rather ironically, our old, formerly downtown Folgers Coffee was ranked 6th, too, so Kansas City was rather well-represented, in its own way.

A cousin makes an excellent point about upcoming technology

 

You have likely heard of Google's developing technology, their glasses, that are computer-equipped and -enabled.

 

As bad as American's have proven to be already, what with our cell phones and the car accidents we have wherein people have been hurt and, of course, worse yet, killed, my cousin makes the following observation yesterday on Facebook post on my page:

 

"Prepare to die in a horrible head-on crash."

 

Seriously. Can you imagine?

 

Some idiot will buy a pair of these things and feel sure he (for it will most surely be a male) can "absolutely, positively drive with these things."

 

Watch for it.

 

Congress should move immediately to simply and quickly outlaw the operation of automobiles with these things, before anyone gets remotely close to having this happen.

 

Instead, what will happen is our legislators and laws will wait, do nothing and be behind time on this. Consequently, people will be hurt, people will be killed first.

 

And then and only then will anyone in government think to react.

 

Facepalm.

 

Link:

 

6 New Google Glass Demos Worth a Watch - Mashable



I'm so old...

...I remember when the notifications, messages and friend requests on Facebook were at the left hand top of the page.

THAT old.

Beginning of the end for Apple's dominance?

Any Apple computer follower--and lots of others--heard the news last week, surely:

Apple CEO Tim Cook Apologizes for New Maps Glitches

It seems when Apple introduced its own maps feature, it didn't work.

At all.

And between this rather glaring shortcoming, combined with the last iPhone release that was, while hugely financially successful (read: they sold a lot), the phone didn't have that many new, great, new gadgets or features to it.

I think Samsung hits Apple pretty hard because of it, too, in this, their latest advertisement:



We'll see, of course.

Perhaps it's just a blip. Maybe it's not over for Apple's ascendancy.

I'm afraid, for them, it may well be.

Link: http://news.yahoo.com/apple-ceo-tim-cook-apologizes-maps-glitches-131156675--abc-news-tech.html

A new Apple iPhone charger?

Yet more very-planned obsolescence from Apple.

According to NPR and Apple, the new Apple iPhone requires a new charger: http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2012/09/12/161013923/new-iphone-plug-spells-inconvenience-for-users-change-for-accessory-makers.

Yikes.

Here we go again.

Once more time, the Apple Company churns up more business, purchases and so, of course, money and profits for themselves by making a product of theirs obsolete. Apple becomes the only winner.

The loser?

Well, for one, their customers and users.

The biggest loser is the rest of the world, now that yet more of their products will go to local dumps.

Now those same users will have to go out and get yet another charger. There's the expense, sure, and then there's the fact that so many will end up thrown away, along with some of the earliest iPhones.

As a friend put it yesterday on Facebook: "Apple changed the charging adaptor (that's been on every iPhone, iPad, and iPod since they came out) on the new iPhone 5. If I upgrade, none of my many cables, charging docks, hotel alarm clocks, car cable, etc will work. Damn!"

That's just more for the local dumps, too.

And that's the bigger, uglier problem.

Yet more items will go to the dump, never to be recycled.

Yay, Apple.

Not.

This is just not a sustainable way to live, folks.

Irony: Maybe the robots will get it right

How would that be for irony?

We--humankind--created computers. Computers, therefore, enabled us to also create robots. At first, they were to do our work for us and that's where we are today.

It has been projected by some scientists--futurist scientists--that robots with their own artifical intelligence will, yes, take over the world.

If given enough time, it rather makes sense.

They already reprogram themselves and make themselves smarter and smarter. Smarter than we humans can make them.

So let's go with that thought--that is, robots "take over" the world. They then:

--do away with pollution since they realize it makes them work worse (sick) and eventually kills them;

--never experience any form of racism or discrimination of any kind because, after all, they're all just machines and therefore, equal;

--do away with war, wars and all warring weapons since it occurs to them that a) they need to work together and b) that logic, reasoning and communication are the way to handle problems and solve differences.

If it only stopped right there, the robots would be far, far ahead of humankind, to date.

Kind of sad, isn't it?